9 Vaughan candidates demand public inquiry to 'verify' election results

City of Vaughan says candidates' claims are “incorrect” and “without merit”

Yorkregion.com
Nov. 12, 2018
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Dubbing Vaughan’s municipal election as “skewed,” nine candidates have demanded a full-fledged public inquiry into the way it was conducted.

In an email to Vaughan City Clerk Todd Coles, Simone Barbieri, who ran as candidate for the Ward 2 council seat, and eight other candidates are demanding a public inquiry to have an “equal opportunity to verify the validity and the trueness behind every ballot" cast in the Oct. 22 municipal election.

But the city says the candidates' claims are “incorrect” and “without merit.”
"The City of Vaughan ran a successful, fair and legal municipal election,” it said in an email. “The Office of the City Clerk is committed to providing high quality service to all residents and candidates, in complete compliance with the Municipal Elections Act."

Vaughan election night live 2018: Linda Jackson returns, incumbents re-elected
In addition to Barbieri, who garnered 968 votes, others demanding an inquiry include Fitzroy Gordon and Vince Scaramuzzo, Ward 1 councillor candidates,  who received 643 and 1,126 votes respectively, Furio Liberatore, who ran for Ward 4 councillor and garnered 954 votes, and Skanda Singarajash a regional councillor candidate who pulled in 2,846 votes.

In Ward 1, the incumbents Marylin Iafrate won landslide victory at 6,540, Tony Carella for Ward 2 at a whopping 4,023, and Sandra Yeung Racco for Ward 4 at 2,869 votes.

The other candidates raising concerns include Simone’s sister Michaela Barbieri, who run as candidate for Ward 2 Catholic School Board Trustee, Charline Grant and Miranda Goldberg who ran for public school trustee seats in Ward 1 and 2  and Kathleen Beal, Conseil Scolaire Catholique candidate, who garnered only 44 votes.

In the Wards 1 and 2 public school board trustee race, Anna Debartolo took the lion's share of 4,437 votes, Dino Giuliani won the Ward 2 Catholic School Board trusteeship with 2,418 votes. As for Beal, her only competition was Maxime Papillon, who won 114 votes.

The claims

In the letter, the former candidates allege the city didn’t adhere to some bylaws before and during the time polls were open, and that Coles was aware.

Among their concerns is that voters were turned away before polls closed and that “obvious errors” in the preliminary voters’ list, such as duplicate names, were not corrected.

Unlike provincial and federal elections, the letter said the voters list also didn’t provide phone numbers, a key tidbit for candidates not to call people again during canvassing.

The letter also requested information on “how many people were hired,” “how many people were city workers to non-city workers” and how far in advance of the election did training begin.

“We are asking how many hours were spent training every person that was hired for the 2018 City of Vaughan Municipal elections," they said.

After grilling session

The letter comes after an Oct. 31 post-election meeting where Coles walked candidates through accuracy testing on a sampling of vote tabulators used in the election.

At that meeting, Barbieri, Grant’s husband Garth Bobb and another Ward 2 candidate Carrie Liddy slammed the election.

“Sampling these tabulators should have been done in 24 hours, it's just when you are doing an investigation on a case, a cold case goes a cold case in 72 hours, 48 hours, this is already cold by a week,” Barbieri said.

One of the examples of the discrepancies Bobb mentioned in the meeting is that his currently Florida-based friend had her name showing as a Vaughan resident despite the fact she left the city eight years ago.

“We are expressing concern, we spoke with other candidates and there were several concerns raised. We are waiting for the city to provide the information that they promised, which is a reconciliation of votes,” Bobb said after the meeting, not attended by other 62 candidates.

In the letter, meanwhile, the nine candidates requested “full disclosure” on how the tabulators were tested and readied up for the election.

‘Training always a challenge’

At the meeting, Coles said “training is always a challenge” for election workers. He also blamed any mistakes found on the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), which provides the voters list.

“We are the mercy of MPAC,” Coles said, who kept a cool, calm demeanour during the meeting despite the heated grilling session.

In response to questions from York Region Media Group, the city also said “some candidates have attempted to use the voters’ list in a way that was never intended or possible, by trying to reconcile the election results with the number of voters struck from the list.”

It added: “As ballots and the intention of the voters are secret, there is no possible way to directly link voters struck from the voters’ list and the number of votes cast for any candidate or race.”

The election results were certified Oct. 26 and any Canadian can protest the outcome in court within 30 days frame from that date if they doubt the credibility of the race.

At the meeting, Liddy and Barbieri gave Coles a 30-day window before going forward with a court case.

On Nov. 5, the City said that it hasn’t sent the voters’ list but they are available, and any former candidate can “receive a copy” or contact Coles’ office.